The compact mixing desk thread

[Al Krow]

Just came across this, which might be of interest: The Best Compact Analog Mixers for your Studio

 

Flattering to discover two of the desks I've had over the years on the list (Allen & Heath and Soundcraft)!

[Al Krow]

On 13/12/2024 at 19:27, mike257 said:

 

With the eternal caveat that I can't really give proper advice on a mix without hearing both the system and the content....

 

Kick Drum: I'd do about the same on a proper full range touring system. If you're on a small powered tops & subs band setup, I'd maybe go up a touch higher just so you're not overworking the amps. You're not going to get gut-shaking low end from a couple of small boxes in a function room/pub etc, so if you can let the sub amps and drivers work a little less hard at the super low stuff they struggle with, they can give you more of the slightly higher stuff that they're able to reproduce more efficiently. 

 

Bass: Depending on the sound you're going for and where it's sitting in the mix, I'd generally go anywhere from 40 to 80 as a starting point. It's always good to sit the low end of the bass in a different spot to the kick and give them each their own space though. 

 

Vocals (Male and female): I tend to go a little higher with these. Generally anywhere from 120 to 160, sometimes even higher depending on what else is going on in the mix. You really don't need that much low end from a vocal in the majority of situations, and a lot of the information down that low will be spill from drums and amps too, which you can do without. 

 

Guitars: I'll usually go somewhere around 100 to 120 as a starting point. If it's a busy mix with lots of keys, tracks etc I'll often go quite a bit higher to help it sit in the mix, whereas if it's a simpler drums/bass/guitars mix I'll probably leave it lower down and let the guitars be a little bigger. 

 

Drums: Another big "it depends"... With individual close mics I'll use this to place each source in the mix, with toms set a little higher (small rack toms at around 80, stepping down with the pitch of each tom , floor tom often as low as the kick). Snare will depend on the mix - I'm quite partial to a chunky snare with a lot of low end weight so I'll often leave this low, but sometimes you need a "smaller" snare to sit in a busy mix and I'll crank it up towards 180/200. For overheads (or a single mic over the kit like you're using) I'll go pretty high with the HPF. You're not going to get tons of definition or pleasant low end from overheads on a small stage and the stage spill from amps etc will be significant, so I'll take this up pretty high and just use that mic to get the attack of the drums popping through, especially when it's a small system and you're just after a bit of reinforcement and extra definition in a smaller room. 

 

If you're not sure on a HPF, a good starting point is often to wind the frequency up until you can actually hear it taking something significant out, then wind it back just a little from that point. Then you know you're at least getting rid of the content you don't need from that source, which will be a big help in cleaning up your mix. As above, you can be more aggressive with it on some sources, but it's very situation-dependant. 

 

Sorry for the essay, hope it's helpful!

 

@mike257 - with regard to our specific line up, we have a male low bass vox with a C2 to C4 vocal range i.e. 65Hz to 260Hz, but he mostly sings in the C2 to C3 range i.e. up to 130Hz. He's not got a particularly strong vox and the bass vox is harder to hear in the mix anyway. Setting the HPF across the board at 150Hz has left his vocals sounding thin.

 

So I was thinking of making an exception for his vox, and lowering the HPF to 60Hz in line with what we have for the bass guitar, and as with the bass guitar giving him a 3dB boost in at around 120Hz (2nd harmonic of C2). But, unlike bass guitar, keeping that 3dB boost up across the full 120 to 240Hz range i.e. up to the 2nd harmonic of C3. In isolation his vox does sound a lot richer with the updated EQ settings, but we've not had chance to try it in a band mix and I guess the proof of the pudding will be then!

 

However, I wanted to run it passed you (and others more expert than me on here) before I cause chaos at a gig when I'm unlikely to have the bandwidth to figure out / remember / correct for what's causing us to sound awful!

Edited February 14 by Al Krow

[Steve Browning]

A question regarding the XR18 and saving settings.

 

Can I set up a theoretical gig and save it as a starting template? Say, 4 vocals with LPF set at 100Hz, Kick and bass set at 40Hz etc. I could save that as a kind of theoretical line up and create that as a starting point. My plan would to do the equivalent 'file, save as' for each new venture. If that makes any sense? That might save time for eacxh new line up.

 

 

[JPJ]

1 hour ago, Steve Browning said:

A question regarding the XR18 and saving settings.

 

Can I set up a theoretical gig and save it as a starting template? Say, 4 vocals with LPF set at 100Hz, Kick and bass set at 40Hz etc. I could save that as a kind of theoretical line up and create that as a starting point. My plan would to do the equivalent 'file, save as' for each new venture. If that makes any sense? That might save time for eacxh new line up.

 

 

Yes you can do this, but only whilst connected to the desk. The Behringer apps will only run in demo mode unless actually connected to an XR18. Not sure about Mixing Station - that may have offline functionality?

[grapefruitmoon]

7 minutes ago, JPJ said:

Yes you can do this, but only whilst connected to the desk. The Behringer apps will only run in demo mode unless actually connected to an XR18. Not sure about Mixing Station - that may have offline functionality?

 

Are you sure you need to be connected if using the Windows/Mac apps? Sure I've done some setups like this before offline, then loaded it to the mixer later. Can have a look later on to confirm.

[Phil Starr]

I think you'll find that settings are saved to the mixer so you will need to be connected. The tablet is just a control surface and that makes sense, otherwise you would lose everything if you used a different tablet.

[grapefruitmoon]

Yes via the tablet apps that's correct - hadn't read the previous messages where it mentioned an Android tablet. I'd done it before on Windows and Mac and saved the scenes, which were then loaded to the mixer.

 

This has been useful to know as well as I'm looking at not using a laptop at a gig, just using tablet, so glad this has been mentioned! 

[jimmyb625]

On 14/02/2025 at 11:14, Phil Starr said:

I think you'll find that settings are saved to the mixer so you will need to be connected. The tablet is just a control surface and that makes sense, otherwise you would lose everything if you used a different tablet.

I'm a bit late to this, but with mixing station, you can save scenes on the app and load them onto the desk (disclaimer, I can't remember for certain if it does it with the xr-18, but I think it does. I'll try it later.)

It's then a case of loading it on to the mixer when you connect, so I guess the answer is "it does both".

[dave_bass5]

3 hours ago, jimmyb625 said:

I'm a bit late to this, but with mixing station, you can save scenes on the app and load them onto the desk (disclaimer, I can't remember for certain if it does it with the xr-18, but I think it does. I'll try it later.)

It's then a case of loading it on to the mixer when you connect, so I guess the answer is "it does both".

It's been a while since I did it, but im pretty sure you can do this with layouts, but the mixer holds all the levels settings. These get sent to the tablet once it's connected to the mixer......I think. 

[tauzero]

1 hour ago, dave_bass5 said:

It's been a while since I did it, but im pretty sure you can do this with layouts, but the mixer holds all the levels settings. These get sent to the tablet once it's connected to the mixer......I think. 

 

I may be able to supply further evidence (not for Mixing Station but for the X-Air app on Android). When I installed it on one tablet, I omitted to give it write permissions to the filesystem. While I could save scenes and snapshots, whenever I tried to store an amended layout (Layers option), it crashed out. Very frustrating until I worked out what I'd done (or not done). So scenes are written to the mixer, as are all the settings from when you last switched it off, and layouts to the local storage.

[JPJ]

On 13/02/2025 at 12:20, JPJ said:

Yes you can do this, but only whilst connected to the desk. The Behringer apps will only run in demo mode unless actually connected to an XR18. Not sure about Mixing Station - that may have offline functionality?

Re thinking this. When you use X-Air Edit on PC (I use it on an old Microsoft Surface Go), when connecting to the X-Air mixer you get the option to transfer settings from the PC to the Mixer or Mixer to PC, so I am guessing you could build a scene file offline then upload this to the mixer the next time you connect. I say guessing because I haven’t tested this. I know that this doesn’t work with the iPad app as this goes straight into demo mode when opened with the iPad not connected to the mixer. 

[jimmyb625]

8 hours ago, dave_bass5 said:

It's been a while since I did it, but im pretty sure you can do this with layouts, but the mixer holds all the levels settings. These get sent to the tablet once it's connected to the mixer......I think. 

I'm not 100% sure with the x-air, as most of the time I'm using A&H QU's (Quniverse?), but with Mixing Station, you can load all of the channel settings (gain, fader levels, sends etc) from the app onto the desk. 

 

I forgot to check it earlier, but I'll try to have a look.

[dave_bass5]

10 hours ago, jimmyb625 said:

I'm not 100% sure with the x-air, as most of the time I'm using A&H QU's (Quniverse?), but with Mixing Station, you can load all of the channel settings (gain, fader levels, sends etc) from the app onto the desk. 

 

I forgot to check it earlier, but I'll try to have a look.

You could be right. what we do is store each gig in the XR18, so when we go back there we just recall those settings from the desk, in to MS's layout. Never done it the other way around when off line.